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Monday, June 9, 2008

疑心暗鬼

ぎしん あんきgishin anki

Ya SUSPECT! One of the things that I love about studying Yo-ji-juku-go is the fun of decoding them. I thought I was onto a Tell-tale Heart with this one, but it wasn't what I expected it to be.

Definition:疑いの気持ちで見ると、なんでもないことまで怪しく思えること。Translation:1. Suspicion breeds suspicion.2. A state of paranoia3. When you go looking for demons, you'll find them, even if you have to conjure them up yourself

I could've used this one just a week ago, when I got back from India and was convinced that I had malaria after looking up all the symptoms online... or I could use it to describe how I feel about airplanes. Why does every single noise that an airplane makes sound like some kind of mechanical failure?

The important point in using this yo-ji is that it's not a matter of a guilty conscience that creates the paranoia, as I first suspected. It's more like the idea of finding a loose pebble on a mountainside and moving cross-country for fear of an avalanche.

例文： A-san: 最近、彼女が嘘ついていると思う。I think my girlfriend's been lying to me lately.B-san: マジで？何の嘘？Really? Lying?A-san: 昨日、7-11で寄って来たと言ったけど、Family Martのレシートだった。何か怪しく思わない？で、車のオドメーターを見て、彼女が言ったより遠くまで行っていた。もしかして、昨日は仕事ではなくて、浮気してたかな？そして、違う道を通って帰って、7じゃなくて、Family Martで夕食を買ってきたのかな。Yesterday, she said she went to 7-11, but the receipt was from Family Mart. Isn't that suspect? Then, I checked her odometer, and she drove farther than she said she did. What if she didn't go to work yesterday? If she was cheating on me, then she would've taken a different road home, and that would explain why she bought dinner at Family Mart and not a 7-11, wouldn't it?B-san: わー。お前、本当に疑心暗鬼になっているなー！今、Family Martのバイトに遅れているから、後で話そう。Wow, you're getting really paranoid, huh? We can talk about this more later. Now, I'm running late for my shift at Family Mart.A-san: お前だ！！！！IT WAS YOU!!!!!

5 comments:

Ever played the old roleplaying game, Paranoia? In it, you play a clone in a Logan's Run-esque society ruled over by a very paranoid and trigger-happy computer that wants to kill all conspirators. Everyone is a conspirator. You die, you come back as another clone, and have fun.

あの狂ったコンピュタめは、疑心暗鬼の考え方で人をいきなり争い訴えて、レーザで罰殺す。Due to that &%$#ing crazy computer's feverishly paranoid way of thinking, it judges people on the spot, smiting them with a laser.

Yup, made up a word. Wanna 罰殺すme for it? I bet you do. Everyone is out to get me.

As her dreams became nightmares, her manner became paranoid. Fog was the fault of ghosts and every sound was a person who wanted to kill her. Nothing was safe.

I know '～ながら' is not the correct expression to use in the above because the sentence doesn't have to do with actions being done. I've checked my old textbook, but I think I'm overlooking the grammar point.

I don't think you need to say 態度 because this yo-ji indicates a mental state already, but I wasn't sure about how to change なりながら, so I took it to the board at Lang-8, and got some really good responses for what to do in this situation. Everybody kept telling me to just say "悪夢を見たので、疑心暗鬼になりました," but I didn't let it go at that, because if you do that you lose the sense that two things have a causative relationship AND that they are progressing, continuous, simultaneous happenings.

They also said that it's more natural to use 悪い夢 or 嫌な夢, and that you should include the phrase 「起きていても」to make it absolutely clear what you're talking about.

That being said, the key grammar point here is につれて、which is an awesome grammar point. It means EXACTLY what you're trying to say. It's used in things like "As berries get darker, they get sweeter," or "As my girlfriend drove away, I realized how wrong I had been."

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